Jens Kyllonen Becomes a Sharking Victim

Wednesday, 11 December 2013

Earlier this year Finnish high stakes pro Jens Kyllonen made a post on 2+2 detailing how he and his roommate, Henri Jaakkola, had their laptops stolen and subsequently from their hotel room during EPT Barcelona. The news caused a wave of panic amongst the game's top player with many reporting similarly suspicious circumstances during the event.

Suspecting that his laptop had been infected with some kind of virus, Jens recently took his laptop to Finnish data and security experts, F-Secure. After handed over the device the company's technicians concluded that the machine had been infected and the attacker was able to see everything Jens was doing on it.

Following their analysis, the digital investigators decided to write about the incident on F-Secure's website in a bid to warn poker players about what they have dubbed "Sharking Attacks". Borrowing the poker community's term for a skilled player, F-Secure have said that Jens's case is significant because the attack wasn't carried out online but in person via a USB stick.

The article goes on to explain that Jaakkola's laptop was also infected and that they believe that Sharking is becoming more common. With that in mind the offered the following simple, yet salient, advice to all poker players:

"If you have a laptop that is used to move large amounts of money, take good care of it. Lock the keyboard when you step away. Put it in a safe when you're not around it, and encrypt the disk to prevent off-line access. Don't surf the web with it (use another laptop/device for that, they're relatively cheap)."

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